As the use of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems increases, many countries have implemented legal policies to essentially protect their telephony providers, e.g., public switched telephony networks (PSTNs), from VoIP systems. That is, many countries effectively prohibit enterprises with VoIP systems from engaging in “toll bypass” by implementing laws that make it illegal to avoid toll charges by routing calls to PSTN gateways homed in other geographic locales.
When a user within an enterprise schedules a collaborative meeting, as for example using WebEx web conferencing available from Cisco Systems, Inc. of San Jose, Calif., a scheduling portal associated with the enterprise and a scheduling portal in a cloud generally collaborate. The scheduling portal in the cloud reserves cloud audio resources and a bridge, e.g., a video or presentation bridge, and provides dial-in codes to the enterprise. The enterprise then reserves local enterprise resources using the dial-in codes. At the time of the collaborative meeting, a multipoint control unit (MCU) of the enterprise that is located in a specific geographic location within the enterprise contacts an MCU of the cloud over a session initiation protocol (SIP) connection between the enterprise and the cloud. Typically, audio is handled by the SIP connection.
When audio is handled by a SIP connection or, more generally, a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) connection, any legal requirements that require audio associated with a call to be routed through a public switched telephone network (PSTN) may be violated. That is, multiparty collaborative sessions may result in cross-geography calls that violate laws by effectively engaging in toll bypass. For example, if a conference bridge supports multiple participants in different geographic locations, when a speaker form a particular geographic location speaks, his or her audio may be relayed from a gateway at the particular geographic location into a cloud bridge. When the audio relayed from a gateway at a particular geographic location is provided by the conference bridge to a participant in a geographic location with a legal requirement that requires audio to be routed through a PSTN, the legal requirement itself, or at least the spirit of the legal requirement, is generally violated.